mark.hammond (2/29/2012)Forgive me. I thought SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services) would be dependent on SQL Server. Maybe you know of some way to make it operate independently.

SSIS is not dependent on the SQL Server database engine. Just install it on another server.

mark.hammond (2/29/2012)To my point, though - this solution imposes the constraint of the availability of SQL Server to perform tasks that have no inherent reliance on the existence, much less the availability, of SQL Server.

Do you prefer to maintain scheduled jobs on 345 different servers or one job server that executes the jobs for all of them? Of course there may exist many cases where it is not smart to use SSIS for these jobs, but there are also numerous situations where it is the best solution.